Word.ws English Dictionary

aborigines

aborigines is the plural of aborigine.

Noun (1)

aborigines pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) The original people of a location; originally used of ancient Greek and Roman peoples.
    • There seems little doubt that the aborigines of Banda were Papuans, and a portion of them still exists in the Ke islands, where they emigrated when the Portuguese first took possession of their native island. It is such people as these that are often looked upon as transitional forms between two...1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., page 456
  2. (plural, plural-only) Indigenous flora and fauna.
  3. (plural, plural-only) The inhabitants of a location before colonization by the Europeans occurred.

Meaning of aborigine

Noun

aborigine (countable and uncountable, plural aborigines)

  1. A native inhabitant of a country; a member of the original people.
  2. (in plural) The native flora and fauna of an area.

See all 3 meanings of aborigine

Proper noun capitalized: Aborigines

the Aborigines pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) Original inhabitants, natives.
  2. (Roman, plural, plural-only) The earliest inhabitants of central Italy, from whom the Latins were said to have descended.
  3. (plural, plural-only) The native peoples of various regions, especially the Australian Aboriginal peoples, but also the original inhabitants of Canada and Argentina. Often considered offensive.
    • AO Neville, the Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia until the 1930s, railed against the risk of the creation of a ‘third race’ of half-castes.2021 November 7, Claire [G.] Coleman, “Not quite blak enough: ‘The people who think I am too white to be Aboriginal are all white’”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 03 Dec 2021

Noun (2) capitalized: Aborigines

Aborigines

  1. (plural) plural of Aborigine

Origin of aborigines

Learned borrowing from Latin aborīginēs.

Learned borrowing from Latin aborīginēs, which see for more.

Questions about aborigines

What does aborigines mean?
Aborigines means the original people of a location; originally used of ancient Greek and Roman peoples.
What is aborigines the plural of?
Aborigines is the plural of aborigine.
What part of speech is aborigines?
Aborigines can be a noun or a proper noun.

Words near aborigines in the dictionary

  1. aboriginally
  2. aboriginalness
  3. aboriginals
  4. aboriginary
  5. aborigine
  6. aborigines
  7. aboriginie
  8. aborigins
  9. aborisha
  10. aborishas
  11. aborization

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: aborigines (page history and authors); Aborigines (page history and authors); aborigine (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “aborigines.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/aborigines. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.